Conscription

If I am invited to a gay wedding and choose not to go for whatever reason, should our government force me to attend else I would be accused of homophobic intolerance? David Brooks has an op-ed that deals with the issue of the trade-offs between religious liberty and equality ... all in the light of Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act that has created a firestorm of religious intolerance ... this time spewing from those who normally require tolerance in others ... see: New York Times Op Ed. Like most of Brooksie's writings, this op-ed skates back and forth between the liberal and conservative takes on this religious-freedom controversy, but I think he is really saying that the ham-fisted backlash against Governor Mike Pence of Indiana is overdone. I agree.

"No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" ... this is a frequent sign found at beach-side establishments. It seems to me that business' have certain rational prerogatives when it comes to what are acceptable for employees and customers. Yet these prerogatives have been proscribed so that certain groups are protected from arbitrary discrimination. Besotted drunks can be denied service at a bar, but cross-dressers cannot. Yet women can be forced to sit in the balcony of an Orthodox Jewish temple. Why? Because of the Constitutional notion of religious freedom. The rub obviously comes when such religious freedoms bump up against the latest fashion in protected behavior.

I can understand bakers being forced to cater gay weddings if they are the only game in town. But it seems a little conscripting to force them to violate their religious principles if there are multiple other willing options. Will President and Michelle Obama accede quietly to their girls entering into same-sex relationships? Can cross-dressers claim that no shoes and no shirts are part of their protected costumes? Will Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Computer, ever allow fundamentalists Christians to bring poisonous snakes to work as religious idols? Will a same sex marriage ever take place in a mosque?

This issue is far more complicated than our media is now allowing ...

Afterward: George Will has a nice turn of phrase when he labels those ranting about this new Indiana law (Apple's Tim Cook) as having "selective indignation" ... see: Daily Caller Story. And it also occurred to me that such phobics as Cook also are very quick off the blocks whilst people like Pence are a little more cerebral ... and often unprepared for such media sucker punches.

After Afterward: I had a analogous thought today ... how is the government forcing a fundamentalist Christian to cater a gay wedding any different from forcing a conscientious objector to serve in the front lines of the military? (Hint, also substitute fundamentalist Muslim for fundamentalist Christian and see if your answer is the same ... see: Louder with Crowder Video.

On Pins and Needles

The nuclear capability reduction talks going on between the "six world powers" and Iran have had the world on pins and needles for weeks ... hoping for some favorable results. I, however, have concluded long ago that these talks are a tedious farce. The current round of negotiations has been so convoluted that one can only conclude that Iran has no intention to arrive at any result except extending negotiations again and again and again. Read the tortured language of the reporting on this Lausanne, Switzerland kabuki dance ... see: AP Reporting. What the hell is the difference between a "framework agreement" and a "framework understanding?" This is how downright inane these discussions have gotten ...

Now, exactly how many Al -Malaa'ikah (Muslim angels) can dance on the head of a pin ... or needle for that matter?

Sad if True

Lemmings

A Washington Post/ABC news poll indicates that, by close to a 2 to 1 margin, Americans think that the nuclear deal taking shape with Iran is a good thing ... see: Washington Post Article. Although there are a few bright spots in these poll results (almost 60% feel that such a deal won't prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon), the poll shows why the Obama administration is hell-bent on this bit of insane appeasement. Fortunately, Congress seems not quite so lemming-like.

Teddy Roosevelt claimed that the president has a "bully pulpit" to get his ideas across. Can we revise this thought just a bit?  Apparently, the president can also bully the American people into sealing their own sad fate.

For a much more rational assessment of these negotiations, read Paul Mirengoff's thoughts in the Powerline Blog.

God, I hope we walk away from this insanity ... even though John Kerry is beseeching a different almighty for a different result ... see: The Gateway Pundit.

The Kennedy Insultitute

This weekend the dedication for the $79 million Edward M. Kennedy Institute ... which is an insult to anyone who knows anything about this reprobate's life ... was held in Boston to honor Ted Kennedy, the deceased Massachusetts senator and political heavyweight. In attendance were many old-boy politicos of both parties including Trent Lott, President Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden and Tom Daschle ... many speaking  lovingly of this pride of Massachusetts ... see: Fox News Story. This Instultitute is primarily a museum meant to honor Senator Kennedy and to educate the public on the workings of government. It was built next to the presidential library of his brother, John F. Kennedy using both public funds ($43 million) and private donations ($36 million) ... although it had been promised to be totally privately funded ... see: Boston Globe Story

It has many exhibits ... one detailing Teddy's cheating prowess at Harvard for which he was eventually expelled, another is the now rusty Oldsmobile Delmont  fished from the Chappaquiddick waters in which Mary Joe Kopechne gave her life as a tribute to Teddy's aquatic heroism, another the neck brace that Teddy wore to help convince the Cape Cod grand jury that he should not be indicted for manslaughter, another is a glowing testament to Teddy ... signed by the millions of illegal aliens who were made legal in the bill he elbowed through Congress in 1986 as the final solution for the United States' illegal immigration problem, another a huge bottle of Chevas Regal Scotch containing Kennedy's pickled brain as a tribute to his lifetime of pickling his brain with this same liquid, another is a Madam Tussuad's mock up of the "waitress sandwich" that Teddy and Senator Christopher Dodd made of a female server at the D.C. La Brasserie restaurant back in 1985 ... and many many more lowlights of this man's life.

For expansion info on these sterling exhibits, read Howie Carr's quick reprise of the "Lyin' of the Senate"'s checkered life ... see: Boston Herald Article.

Afterward: Howie Carr's article has been archived ... here's a better reference: Forbes Piece.

Cherry Blossoms

I had a thought this morning about global warming. How has the date for cherry tree bloomings and the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC changed over the years? This might be a proxy for what is happening to the temperature at least in the Eastern United States. I Googled this idea and found the following chart (see: EPA Source Data for reference) of these dates over the last 94 years. As one can see here first hand, there seems little change in this indicator date except for a up-spike in 1988 and 1998 ... and, in fact, the 2014 and 2015 dates are quite late relative to much of the past:

For you Kool Aid drinkers I have also included a reference to a Boston University/Japanese study of cherry tree blossoming times around Kyoto, Japan which purports to show the opposite effect over a much longer period of time. However, it does concede that warming caused by urbanization trends may be an influence on this data. It also states that the dates for the Washington, DC festival have moved earlier by about a week ... which, as we can see above, is clearly not the case. So it might be that this study is also Chicken-Little biased (ala Mann's "hockey stick" which has been fully debunked by the actual data) ... see: Boston University PDF Reference.

More in the Weeds

Janet Yellen, the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, is worried about this economic beast called "secular stagnation" which may force her to keep interest rates at their historically low levels for an extended period of time ... see: CNBC Story. I realize that this in quite a bit of "in the weeds" kind of discussion ... but then, isn't that where most economists spend their lives? Anyhow, the bottom line of this concern on her part is that raising interest rates in the United States might not be warranted as quickly as she had assumed because of  "demographic factors and a slower pace of productivity gains from technological advances."

The real bugbear here, I believe, is the stagnant or declining population growth in most of the free world ... and demographic advances are at the root of most economic expansion.

The cold hard truth of all these economic machinations is that raising interest rates in the United States may not even now be a option on Yellen's part ... for interest rates at the more "normal" levels of 5 or 6% would cause interest cost for the federal debt of $18+ trillion to quickly squeeze out other budget items ... primarily social spending ... an untenable position. But, if interest rates do not return to these normal levels, then the Fed has no tools or leverage to deal with the next economic crisis which surely is also lurking in these very same weeds.

This is not just a United States' concern ... for most of the rest of the developed world has also painted themselves into this same corner of eternally-low interest rates.. Monetary stimulus has become the opiate of most democratic societies and, I think, this has the radical left salivating ... seeing this as the malady that eventually may well bring down capitalism.

And well it might.

Afterward: For more in-the-weeds economics mowing, see: Washington Post Article. (Tip of the hat to Steve Hayward at the Powerline Blog.)

Firsts

If Hillary Clinton runs for the presidency, her strongest argument for winning is that it is time for the first woman president ... just like Barack Obama's advantage in his elections was that it was time for the first black in the White House. This "first" worked for him (much to the regret of many of his voters) and Hillary, in her high-hatted hubris, obviously thinks another first might work for her.

Of course, there are many other firsts that the American public could also be pining for ... the first Hispanic (Rubio, Cruz, Julian Castro?), the first black woman (Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett ... oh, I forgot she already has been acting as president), the first Jew (Michael Bloomberg?),  the first Martian (James Carville?), the first faux Native-American woman (Elizabeth Warren?), the first Mormon (oops, that didn't work), the first cross-dresser, the first Communist (done that already ...). etc.

I know I am being silly again, but why would such "firsts" be a over-riding advantage for winning the presidential election? But then again why would making a YouTube-published sex tape be a prerequisite for becoming a major media personality (Paris Hilton)? I guess that, given our nation's mindset, these things go together ...

Missing Megabytes

President Nixon's personal secretary, Rosemary Woods, had nothing on Hillary Clinton. According to Hillary's lawyers, all the e-mails that had once resided on Hillary's  personal Chappaqua e-mail server have been "disappeared" ... only this time it was not an "accidental" erasure of the 18 1/2 minute gap of Nixon's Oval Office tapes like in Ms. Wood's case. This critical evidence in the Benghazi investigation has been purposely destroyed so that however dirty Queen Hillary's hands may have been, they now are squeaky clean ... see: New York Times Article.

I have no way of knowing how many of Hillary's critical missive had been destroyed, but I strongly suspect that the actual information content was hundreds, if not thousands of times larger than that which occurred in the Watergate cover-up ... certainly megabytes of digital data rather than a few kilobytes of equivalent analog data in the Nixon case. This evidence destruction has taken place despite the fact that it had been long ago subpoenaed by a duly-empaneled Congressional committee. If this is not a criminal action on Hillary's and her posse's part, I have no notion of jurisprudence.

Where's the equivalent outrage?

Scrambled Eggs

The United States' policy in the Middle East is a plate of scrambled eggs. We have been launching air strikes against the ISIS powers (partly Sunni Muslims) in Tikrit, Iraq along side the Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militias ... which were not gaining an edge and are now pulling back ... see: Powerline Blog Comments. In Yemen we are encouraging the Saudis (Sunnis) to attack the Iranian-backed Houthi Shia rebels with both air power and soon possibly with ground troops ... see: Al Jazeera Story. So we are helping Iran with one hand while slapping it down with the other.

The situation is somewhat duplicated in Libya where Egypt (Sunni) is bombing the ISIS forces there ... see: BBC Story. Simultaneously, we are grabbing our ankles in order to close the nuclear deal with Shia Iran. What a mishmash!

And all the while, President Obama (a Shia sympathiser IMHO) is playing golf in Florida ... see: Washington Times Story.

reddit Gallery CCXCVI

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them. Enjoy!

Gobi Desert in Mongolia

Belgian Waffles

2200 Year Old Greek Mosaic Found in Turkey

Iranian Mosque

Japanese Aquarium

Gobbledygook

Professors and other hanger-ons in higher education communicate in tongues ... they have an unique way of forming ideas that are full of erudite phraseology but carry actual meaning only in the befogged minds of these pedagogues. Paul Mirengoff of the Powerline blog has uncovered a set of mission statements for a number of new professors hired at Dartmouth College that can do nothing but support this gobbledygook notion ... and should bring you, dear readers, a good bit of mirth. Here's a teaser sample:

How is queer intellectual design an intrinsic part of transnational knowledge production in the cultural sphere?

Enjoy this sidetrack into the ivy-covered ivory towers and see if you can actually decipher what these newly-hired liberal (but with a big L) edu-twits are actually saying ... see: Powerline Blog.

Afterward: My wife's comment ... "and for this many parents are spending $60,000+ a year?"

Muslim Martin Luther

I have blogged before about the need for a reformation process within the Muslim religion ... see: A Modern Crusade. The president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has also called for a "revolution" within Islam in order to modernize it ... see: Foxy. And now, that quiet crusader for women's rights within this same religion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has outlined the things that she thinks need to change within Islam ... see: Breitbart Article.

The Somali-born Hirsi Ali has taken many courageous stands for women's rights within the Muslim milieu and has been the target of deadly violence ... see: Politico Article. Just last year she was to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University which then cravenly backed out due to political pressure from the left ... see: New York Times Article. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this remake of Islam into a modern 21st century religion was instigated by this woman? She would then be the Muslim Martin Luther if you will ...

Does anyone also find it strange that the president of the United States has never acknowledged any such reformative thoughts ... when this might be the most effective strategy to combat the growing violent extremist movement within the Muslim world?

New Newspeak

This blogger, along with many other commentators, have noticed how we have slipped into a "1984" type attempt by our Orwellian government to control our thoughts and lives ... in particular its increasing onerous conscription of permissible language. (Have you heard anyone from the Obama administration use the term "radical Islam" or use ISIS instead of ISIL?)

Now we are treated to what we are in for if Queen Hillary becomes the next POTUS. Just yesterday her posse released a list of words that are verboten for reporters to use in her possible upcoming campaign ... see: Daily Caller Story. Whereas, under Obama, such dog-whistle words were racist, now they are sexist. So you have been warned!

Rather than just list these words, I will herein use them in defiance of these Clinton conscriptions. If anyone sees me being gagged and put in a car trunk by James Carville, you will see first-hand the results of my defiance. (Hillary's taboo words are in italics in the following.)

Hillary Clinton certainly has been secretive about her stint at the State Department. By setting up her own e-mail server she clearly felt entitled to circumvent the rules by which the rest of the world lives. Her disingenuous and calculating U.N. press-conference explanation of this scandal has been very polarizing in the media ... with even many liberal talking heads saying that she was insincere and clearly over confident. Ever since she glommed onto Bill Clinton in Yale law school, she has been extremely ambitious for them both ... but more and more she represents the past and has grown increasingly out of touch with middle America. And it is so blatantly obvious that she will do anything to win.

So There!

Apparently in a snit, the Obama administration has just released highly classified information about Israel's nuclear program ... see: Pamala Geller Revelation. Yes, it's an open secret that Israel has had atomic weapons for about fifty years, but the formal acknowledgement of this fact by the United States government ... along with the covert details ... just throws more grease on the fire of the Iranian nuclear talks.

I have long suspected that our fearless leader's motivations surrounding his very lightly-disguised attempts to allow Iran into the nuclear club were because of this capability on Israel's part. After all, it's only fair that Iran should be on a military par with that country it has vowed to annihilate. This kind of infantile thinking on Obama's part is what may cause the next big war to start in this region of the world.

But, following this same churlish logic, it doesn't seem likely that this conflagration would reach Hawaii.

Afterward: For more detail on what was released, see: Israel National News.

Bowe Ties

Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is being charged with desertion as a result of his AWOL disappearance  and eventual imprisonment by the Taliban some five years ago ... see: Washington Post Story. Can we get the five vicious Taliban prisoners back that we traded for this piece of pond scum? Can the Rose Garden ceremony ... where our fearless leader extolled this misbegotten exchange with his arms around Bergdahl's parents ... somehow be erased from the minds of the American people? Can the six or seven soldier's lives that were lost in searching for this troglodyte traitor be somehow resurrected? Can our joke of a National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, please apologize for claiming on national TV that Bowe Bergdahl served "with honor and distinction?"

Yes, leaders are entitled to make mistakes ... but you would think that, if the evidence was so overwhelming that Bergdahl had deserted his post in Afghanistan, they should have at least taken a couple of beats before this administration made such a gigantic and embarrassing set of blunders. I suppose that the hubris of this mob just won't allow that they could be so very wrong ... and, of course, this was not the first of their boners.  Need I try to recount all their many public miscues? Send me a note if you have forgotten ...

And now they say "trust us" regarding the upcoming Iran nuclear deal ... which may not be written down ... but would exist only in the imaginations of the agreeing parties. Isn't this just another recipe for a doofus-done disaster?

Afterward: At least three of the five Taliban prisoners released in exchange for Bergdahl are trying to rejoin the battle ... see: Daily Caller Story.

Standing O

Clearly the main stream media (MSM) has exposed its hand when they gave Hillary Clinton a standing ovation when she spoke at a journalism award ceremony in Washington, DC recently ... see: Breitbart Article. After a series of self-deprecating jokes about her current t-in-a-ringer circumstances (and taking no questions from the audience), these "journalists" revealed their obvious liberal bias by standing and applauding this former First Lady. Can these lemmings now be expected to report future campaign events in an unbiased way if Hillary eventually decides to throw her toque in the ring?

I sincerely doubt it ... MSM could easily stand for May She be Monarch!

Crossed Fingers

"All enemies foreign and domestic." This is what the President of the United States avows to protect the American public from when he is solemnly sworn into office by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Barack Obama has taken this oath twice over the last six or so years ... but it seems he must have been crossing his fingers behind his back when so doing.

This is because, as recently discovered by the Judicial Watch group, the Department of Homeland Security has, during Obama's terms, released 195,900 convicted criminals (including murderers, rapists and kidnappers ... who are also illegal-alien dreamers) back into the general U.S. population ... see: Breitbart Article. Can these not be called domestic enemies? And can we then say that Obama has not taken his oath of office seriously?

Barry's record on protecting against foreign enemies is not so hot either ...

Oil Hypocrites

Jerry Brown is an oil hypocrite in that much of his family wealth comes from the oil industry ... see: Breitbart Story. And he is not the only one ... can we recall the source of much of Al Gore seed money? Why it was Occidental Petroleum run by that closet Communist Armand Hammer ... arm and hammer ... get it? ... remember the logo of the USSR? As Al Gore  was leaving office as Slick Willie's Veep, he pulled a political fast one ... he acquired for a pittance all the oil in the US Elk Hill Naval Oil Reserve in California which he passed on to Occidental of which he was a large stock holder. Are we surprised that a rabid ranter against fossil fuels was also sucking off of this same teat? See the details here: Time Magazine Story.

I think I'll stick my finger down my throat ...

POTUS's Picks

President Barack Obama can't pick the winner of the Israeli elections. He can sway hardly any of the outcomes in the 2012 and 2014 congressional elections. He picked the wrong battle when he went after the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic nuns. He can't even help elect the newest governor of Massachusetts for heavens sake.

And now we learn that he is even dogging it in his true expertise ... basketball. His bracket picks for the March Madness tournaments ... over which he spent more time than trying to solve the Ukrainian crisis ... are now in the toilet ... see: Breitbart Article.

He can't even pick his ....

Vegetarian

Is the old Indian (Native American if you insist) word for "bad hunter."

Foaming at the Mouth

Ted Cruz is announcing his candidacy for the U.S. presidency today, the anniversary of the passing of Obamacare, and much of the media and the looney left are foaming at the mouth with hatred. This morning on the MSNBC show, Morning Joe, both Mika Brzezinski and Donnie ("often wrong but never in doubt") Deutsch could not come up with enough derisive adjectives to express their disdain for this Texas senator. I had to switch channels.

Despite his legacy of media pans and even some Republican critics, Ted Cruz will be a formidable candidate for his perspicacity and combativeness. He is a very good debater and is well versed on all the critical issues facing our nation. Beyond his mediocre polls and the vitriol likely to come his way from many talking heads in the days ahead, I would not count him out. I personally would prefer the somewhat softer-edged Hispanic, Marco Rubio, as the Republican candidate ... but, like the surprising comment from John McCann, if Cruz becomes his party's candidate, I would support him.

It may be that, given how our current Emperor is doing his damnedest to diminish this country, by the time the next election comes around, we may have the appetite for a little more militancy on the part of the Republican candidate. If Hillary Clinton or some other female is the Democrat candidate, then it may well be another election pitting the head against the heart ... a contest that, this time, could well favor the head ... someone like the " courageous conservative" Cruz.

Moonbeams

Governor Jerry Brown of California has stated that, because of his contrarian opinion about global warming, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is "unfit to run for office" ... see: Breitbart Story.

How utterly open-minded can one uber-liberal get?

Junketeer-in-Chief

$$ Last Year in China $$

Why do I have to go to a British newspaper to discover the details of Michelle Obama's second junket this Spring (the first being a skiing trip to Aspen) ... this time to Cambodia and Japan ... with her daughters and assumed entourage ... see: UK Daily Mail Story. Has the Obama administration stopped being transparent? Try it yourself with a Google search and see if you can discover such info in the U.S. media. (This article estimates that such Obama vacations have cost U.S. taxpayers over $40 million during their term in the White House.) The cover story for this taxpayer-funded all-expense-paid luxurious Asian vacation is to promote female education in these countries ... who can quibble with that? However, I strongly suspect that Japanese girls get a far better education  than do their counterparts in the United States.

Perhaps the First Lady can next travel to Trenton, New Jersey to promote female education there? (And stay in a Motel 6?)

I really am sick of politicians of both parties taking vacations on the the taxpayers' dime and calling them trade-missions or fact-finding trips. Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts, particularly during his last years here, took many such sojourns costing millions ... see: WCVB Story. May I suggest that, at the end of such junkets, these political leeches produce a public trip report of the facts that they uncovered or the specific trade that they accomplished. Of course then they will all hide behind the term "good will" mission ... and who can argue with that?

Me, that's who. How about you?

Lighting One Candle

Patrick Moore, a Ph.D and the co-founder of Greenpeace, is a climate-change skeptic and an obvious thinking person. His recent essay on this subject is a must-read for its insights and clarity. To me his words about carbon dioxide are particularly edifying:

Over the past 150 million years, carbon dioxide had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3,000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. If this trend continued, the carbon dioxide level would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human fossil fuel use and clearing land for crops have boosted carbon dioxide from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts per million today. 

At 400 parts per million, all our food crops, forests, and natural ecosystems are still on a starvation diet for carbon dioxide. The optimum level of carbon dioxide for plant growth, given enough water and nutrients, is about 1,500 parts per million, nearly four times higher than today. Greenhouse growers inject carbon-dioxide to increase yields. Farms and forests will produce more if carbon-dioxide keeps rising. 

We have no proof increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the earth’s slight warming over the past 300 years. There has been no significant warming for 18 years while we have emitted 25 per cent of all the carbon dioxide ever emitted. Carbon dioxide is vital for life on Earth and plants would like more of it. Which should we emphasize to our children?

Now if we could just get some of our more looney politicians (for instance, those that have labeled carbon dioxide as a pollutant) to appreciate this kind of true science, we might stop doing all these foolish and expensive things. You might help change things around by reading Dr. Moore's whole treatise ... see: Heartland News Article ... lighting just one small candle.

Lip Service

Who said, "Thank you ... for standing up against the sexual scapegoating of women and girls"? Why it was Monica Lewinsky of course ... once again making an attempt to become relevant in a world which treats her as a joke. So she sheds a tear and preaches to the world how unfairly she has been treated after she pursued and captured Bill Clinton in some sexual scapegoating of her own ... see: New York Times Story.

Do we remember who was the initial aggressor in this relationship? As I recall when she got that intern job at the White House she bragged to her friends that she was going to take her knee pads with her. She followed this up by flashing Slick Willie her thong whilst delivering pizza to the Oval Office.

Not that President Clinton needed any encouragement to whet his rampant randiness. As an old friend of mine used to say, he would do a snake if it would stay still long enough.

So Monica Lewinsky made herself a punch and into a punch line ... yet somehow wants the world to forgive her her trespasses. I suppose I could forgive her, but not if she keeps up with this sackcloth and ashes lip service about her victim-hood. But I  also don't think I can forget the bordello that she and that Lothario from Hope, Arkansas made of the our nation's White House.

Manatees Too

Remember the spotted owl? Its "threatened extinction" was the reason that the environmentalist used to reduce drastically the cutting of timber in the northwest United States. How about the snail darter? Again a creature that was the poster child for shutting off water to the farmers of the Central Valley of California. And the peregrine falcon? Rachael Carson used this bird as a way of outlawing DDT (and in the process killing millions of humans with malaria, etc.) And the salmon ... goodbye to any new hydroelectric dams ... and even a sizable parcel of older ones.

Enter stage left the manatee ... which now it is believed relies on the warm water exiting from coal-fired power plants in Florida to ease the rigors of cold weather there ... see: Miami Herald Article. But wait! This can't be! If the tree-huggers were to be consistent, they would fight our fearless leader's war on such "environmental hazards" as the use of coal to produce electricity.

But are they?   [... crickets ....]   One can only assume that these other animals were really incidental to the real hidden agendas of those who knew that they knew what was best for the rest of us.

reddit Gallery CCXCV

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them. Enjoy!

Los Vegas Suburb

Texas

Lapidaria Margaretae

1969 Holden Herricaine

Geese over Mont Saint-Michel

Petulant Child

The president of the United States is acting like a petulant child. He won't call the newly elected prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, to congratulate him on his victory. He is plotting to bypass Congress with his capitulation with Iran and also use the U.N. to force a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians ... see: Fox News Story and  Foreign Policy Magazine Article.

The United States is now in the bizarre position of treating Israel like a pariah ... the only true democracy in the Mid-East and our supposed closest ally there ... while the fulminator of terrorism in the region, Iran, is being courted like a beauty queen.

President Obama is pursuing his own personal warped ideologies to the exclusion of the national interests of the United States ... a very defiant and dangerous situation.

Queen Hillary

As could be expected, the State Department has discovered that Hillary Clinton neglected to sign her exit form OF-109 when she left office … like all employees are required to do. This was an expected oversight for, had she signed it, she would be guilty of perjury … and might face criminal prosecution. So after days of frantic searches and gnashing of teeth, conveniently this form, had it once existed, has disappeared … see: Breitbart Article for the details about this flim-flam.

It is beyond my feeble deductive processes as to how the American public can be so in the dark about the regal nature of Queen Hillary’s disdain for the normal protocols of life. Can it be that the main-stream media has covered up for her all these years? Nah!

Goodbye ...

to the Internet Explorer. Microsoft has decided to phase out this Internet browser in favor of a newer technology, "Project Spartan" ... see: PC Magazine Story. This browser once held north of a 80% market share, but upstarts have been quietly eroding this monopoly over the last so many years until the boys at Redmond had to take this technology out behind the shed and shoot it.

This blog you are reading had 4031 hits over the last month and here is the breakdown of what browsers were used to reference it: Firefox - 46%, Chrome - 31%, Safari - 9%, Explorer - 7%, the rest - 7%.  Now we can see why Microsoft is making this move. As Dean Wormer said in Animal House, "Fat, happy (actually drunk) and stupid is not a way to go through life."

So, as it turns out, Microsoft has been forced to face its past lassitude and will try to use the leverage of its other monopolies to once again crush its competitors.

We'll see.

An Irish Story

Paddy is dying.

His wife, Molly, calls in the priest to give him his last rites.

The priest asks Paddy if he is comfortable ... to which he replies he is ready.

After the priest leaves, Molly enters and asks Paddy how he is doing?

Paddy replies that he is comfortable and ready to meet his maker.

Molly then asks Paddy, "Paddy, you've been such a wonderful husband ...  is there anything, anything at all I can do for you in your last hours?"

[Pause]

Paddy then replies, "Molly, I smell a ham a cookin' in the kitchen ... can I just have a wee slice?"

Molly quickly responds, "But Paddy, that'd spoil it for the wake."

Fifty Shades of Gore

Former vice president and renowned climatologist, Al Gore is proposing that the world punish climate-change deniers ... see: Ecowatch Article. If his wish does come to pass, then I believe that it may be counterproductive ... as the ranks of the deniers may swell dramatically ... given the modern-day obsession with sadomasochism ... as a result of the movie, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Independently, the more the altered data and twisted logic of the warmists is drawing public doubt, the more desperate they are becoming ... see: Climate Depot Story.

Presidential Library

Pretty soon President Obama has to decide where his presidential library is going to be located. There are a number of possibilities and, to help him in this decision, I would love to get the readers of this blog to weigh in on which is their preferred choice. Therefore, either choose one of the options below ... or, offer an alternative:

- Chicago, Illinois

- Tehran, Iran

- Honolulu, Hawaii

- Cambridge, Massachusetts

- Havana, Cuba

- Nairobi, Kenya

- Ferguson, Missouri

- Jakarta, Indonesia

- The Gates of Hell

Or, given his plutocratic tendencies, maybe all of them  ...

Letter of the Law

Forty-seven Republican Senators sent a letter to the Ayatollah in Iran last week that undermines President Obama's negotiating position vis-a-vis the current nuclear talks ... only insofar as it pointed out the obvious Constitutional issue. And that is ... if the Obama administration strikes an executive deal with Iran to try to rein them in relative to acquiring atomic weaponry, that this deal does not have the binding status of a treaty unless 2/3rds of the United States Senate ratifies it.

And clearly, if this is a bad deal, then there is no chance that the Senate would so vote. This is the law of the land ... and a hard fact that the executive branch of the U.S. government seems to be ignoring in its infatuated dealings with the criminal regime in Tehran ... dealings so starry-eyed and desperate that a bad deal seems highly likely.

This letter unleashed a Democrat and fellow-traveler firestorm ... accusing these letter-signers of treason and sedition. The unfortunate part of this dust-up between the Democrats and Republicans is that, if these negotiations come up empty, then most of the media will once again blame the Republicans ... rather the naïveté of our Secretary of State John Kerry and the fecklessness of the current administration. Apart from this, my major issue with this letter is that not all 100 Senators endorsed it ... even after the fact. That would have been a noble and defining moment ... finally pointing out to Emperor Obama that we have a government of checks and balances.

And there is a parallel incident of an Obama executive nullification that all of these media talking heads (with their hair on fire) seem to have forgotten. That was when our fearless leader went back on the agreement that George W. Bush had struck with Poland and the Czech Republic to place anti-missile shields on their lands ... shields that would have helped to protect Europe and the United States against Russian and Iranian ICBM's. Alas, what short and convenient memories our lefty media always seems to have.

Great Idea

A while back I suggested that our federal government buy, at today's rock-bottom prices, more oil to add to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve ... see: A Strategic Suggestion. This would help out the oil fracking industry in the United States while, at the same time, providing a cushion against future petroleum shortages. Now guess what? Our government is doing just that ... proposing the purchase of up to 5 million barrels to add to this reserve ... see: CNBC Story. Will miracles never cease?

I have a further suggestion ... how about making it 50 or 100 million barrels?

Malware

Last night I finished a two day bout with a particularly insidious piece of malware, Binkiland ... as evil a piece of software that ever has been invented. It basically made my computer almost inoperable. In a way it reminded me of those parasites that kill their hosts ... not a very wise strategy for self propagation. Therefore I had to kill this monster ... which I eventually did, although it took me two agonizing days and $40.

I think I infected my computer with this malware when I saw a pop-up advising me to update my Adobe Flash Player. Stupidly I clicked on that fatal button and sunk into a funk of losing one of my best of friends and confidents ... my computer. The first manifestation of Binkiland is that it takes over your browser and throws all sorts of irritating pop-ups into whatever you are trying to do.

At first I tried my standard virus-fighter ... Avast ... which was not up to the task. It advised me to use a rescue disk and re-format my computer. So I called the Geek Squad at Best Buy and they gave me the number of where I could order one from Acer. Unfortunately every time I called this number I was told to call back later. So I went on my Ipad and searched "Binkiland" and found a few references on how to get rid of same. The first one was so technically detailed that I gave up. But then I found a recommendation to use Spyhunter ... which I downloaded and ran. It seemed to be doing the job, but wanted $39.95 before it fixed things.

I was desperate so I paid the money and took my chances. It worked! However it took the better part of a day to do its stuff. So, if you follow my lead, be patient.

And, for the developers of Binkiland, may you rot in hell.

Afterward: I sometimes get the impression that our federal government is infected with malware ...

reddit Gallery CCXCIV

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them. Enjoy!

Driverless Mercedes

Cheese Market, Alkmaar, Holland

Oasis

Indus Valley Bullfrog

Tallest Palm Tree